Trump is actually right on California's high-speed rail

And, yeah, if cutting $4 billion in federal subsidies either forces California to get its shit together, or else walk away, so be it.

I said 15 years ago that HSR projections in California were dubious.

Six months after I wrote that, I went into much more detail about everything wrong with California's high-speed rail plans.

The clusterfuck of stupidities included too many stops and not straight enough lines.

Beyond the problems, it also included miscomparisons, as I noted much of "old Europe" trains aren't really "high speed" rail, just "faster than US" rail. 

There's also the massive stupidity that, unlike in Europe, rail lines in general in the US, including HSR proposals, whether in California, Tex-ass or Flori-duh, don't tie into airports. 

In Governor Pothole's California, cost overruns are less a problem than construction delays. The main line, San Fran to LA, was supposed to be done by 2020. Even if the federal money stayed, I doubt it would be done by 2030. 

Texas bullet train gets fluffed again

Please make it stop, at least while all the old mindsets are in place.

The Chronic plays up Amtrak's looking at Texas high-speed rail. As long as Amtrak keeps itself wedded to the Texas Central concept, including a stop at Roans Prairie (ie BFE) and the real estate grifting of whatever sort that is attached to that, it ain't going nowhere — and shouldn't. Kuff, Brains and any other current (active or inactive), or former, members of Texas Progressives who live in the Houston area need to be real — and, even more, need to be honest about the Texas Central route. 

In my opinion, following Texas 6 from Helltown to College Station and Waco, then up I-35, has always made much more sense.

Beyond that, given its operations elsewhere in Texas, Amtrak involvement doesn't guarantee good routing.

 

Greg Abbott: Bullet-train bimbo with a party of hypocrites

I argued directly with Brains, long ago, and indirectly with Kuff more recently, about the virtues vs. the vices of the Texas Central Railroad. This piece from about 15 months ago is the latest on that.

That's until now, with the help of a new Texas Monthly piece about Gov. Strangebbott pulling yet another of his Jesuitical flip-flops, this on the train. He first wrote a letter in support of it, to make sure the Japanese government still had a yen for it, then, allegably spurred by some of his staff, who wrote the Snooze to say he was agin it, he's .... agin it!

First of all, there's some bad framing in the middle of the piece, as I told Morgan O'Hanlon. It's not all wingnuts or gummint officials who oppose it. Per my link, Schutze has long looked at the Dallas station terminus as a focus of grift. From my part, having lived in Navasota, I'm smelled the hog crap of a station in Roans Prairie ever since the line was first announced. The claims that this was to try to serve both College Station and Huntsville are itself bullshit, as I said in a previous piece which also noted the whole fricking line was wrong for following I-45 instead of Texas 6. "Bullet" stops are at College Station and Waco where you hit 35 and that's that. Maybe on a non-express, you drop a stop at Hillsboro, and one at Katy. I discuss stop-gaps (no pun intended!) on a bullet train route, based on French trains, in this old post.

And, as I predicted there? Just like in California (there's Texas wingnuts being hoist by their own petard), the price is going up WAY over the original. Cost estimates have doubled. Oh, no, I'm sorry, they've TRIPLED. And, no, contra that piece, work won't start in the first half of 2021. It's not just that the Lege may monkey-wrench it further. They still don't have all their federal permits. And COVID will still be an issue on supply chain. And, will the Japanese government money remain firm in the face of all of the above?

In any case, no, it's not starting before fall 2021 at the earliest.

That said, back to the Monthly's piece? It IS "fun" to watch the wingnuts not in the gov's mansion blather about "Green New Deal." I think they forgot "Agenda 21" and "the bullet train will take over our golf courses."

And, back to that Snooze piece. "Incomplete information"? The train's been on the drawing board for almost a full decade now, right? Lying sacks of shit.

The only "incomplete information" Abbott had was the degree of vociferousness of opposition that could contribute to him being primaried in 2022. In August, I saw that as more unlikely than yes, offering 2-1 odds against. Now? Especially if Shelley Luther tops Drew Springer? I'd cut those odds to 3-2. Still 3-2 against, but narrowing.

That said, Abbott's staffers aren't the only liars here. TCR's foreign partners claiming the coronavirus was "the" cause of 28 layoffs in March? Maybe A cause, but THE cause? No.

Finally, there's Texas Central Railroad being hypocrites. 

Remember they originally said that this would all be private money? Guess that only applied to inside the US of A. Foreign gummint money spends just fine in their quicksilver fingers, apparently.

High-speed rail signs a contract? We don't need no steenking vacuous contracts

It's "nice" of Brains to think about me on Texas' high speed rail, mentioning that the Texas Central Railway has signed a multibillion dollar construction contract, but, as I blogged several weeks ago, per Jim Schutze, the real real estate grifting may not be out in Roans Prairie (though we shouldn't ignore that) but in downtown Dallas. There's also good evidence that there is plenty of good old capitalist lying on ride count estimates. That's not just me that says that, but at the link, a lot of people who have tracked this issue.

Given that TCR has insisted it will be entirely private, and that, re those ride count overcounts, I still say that they're running a bad route, instead of doing what I said from the start, following Texas 6 to have an intermediate stop IN College Station, not some fucking grifting bit of rural real estate, plus another stop in Waco.

Beyond that? That contract signing means nothing, for a couple of big reasons.

One, I see it as an attempt to buffalo either the Texas Lege away from tightening eminent domain law (it gave such tightening semi-serious consideration this year), or else buffalo state courts away from adverse rulings.

Two, such contracts mean nothing. I lived most the previous decade in Dallas' Best Southwest suburbs, just north of Red Oak, which is in turn just north of Waxahachie.

Decades ago, a number of contractors and subcontractors signed contracts to work on this thing called ...

The Superconductor Super Collider.

There's a big ditch north side of Waxahachie today from all that contract work. No massive subatomic particles to be found.

Your latest Texas high-speed rail update

The Texas bullet train recently dodged a legal bullet about its ability to use eminent domain but it still retains a stupid route, as I have said before. Whether Brains is right that it’s too late for that to be addresses or not, along with other issues, remains to be seen. Kuff, like Brains, likes the bullet train.

Whether it actually gets built and then, whether as a privately financed line, it asks for state help because of its stupid route and stupid stops, also remains to be seen. (After all, stupid routing ideas are part of what derailed California's bullet train, at least for now.)

There's several people that agree with me on ever-growing comments on Kuff's link that Texas Central was, has been and is selling a pig in a poke. A lot of libertarian-type wingers at groups who know how to crunch numbers, like Reason, are also saying that ride counts are not just inflated but WILDLY inflated. (That said, contra the wingers, airports are subsidized in various ways, too.)

Let's also note that that legal bullet was only temporarily dodged. Courts could still rule that Texas Central cannot use eminent domain.

And, speaking of locations, in south Dallas at least, Jim Schutze says the train is a land deal first, transportation deal second. And he too says he thinks the ride projection numbers are pretty aspirational.

TX Progressives wrangle the Lege's nuttery and more

Stupidity abounds on the political landscape in the Pointy Abandoned Object State™ this week, from the Texas Legislature through the city of Dallas and on to that city's daily ink-waster, the Dallas Morning Snooze.

Dive in as the Texas Progressives tackle that and more.

Buckle your seat belt, because this version of the roundup has lost of high-octane snark.

The Lege

It's "hell week" in Austin, when bill authors scramble to avoid poison pill amendments, calendar back-burner placement and other problems and try to cross the finish line, then hope Gov. Strangeabbott puts his scrawl on their pet legislation.

Yesterday was the last day for Senate bills to get first consideration in the House. Today is the last day for that if they're on the consent calendar — which always can be torpedoed, and was in the previous Lege by Former Fetus and Forever Fuckwad Jonathan Stickland. Friday is the last day for the House to accept negotiations or changes on its bills as suggested by the Senate; Saturday is the last day to vote on such bills.

As of Monday, here's a big picture look on various bills from the Trib. Following is a pullout on some specific bills.

Off the Kuff analyzes the relentless Republican attack on local control this session.

Stephen Young reported on the Lege’s progress in a “born alive” bill and the pandering behind it. 

Sophie Novack at the Texas Observer reports on SB 22, the “anti-Planned Parenthood” bill. 

Also at the Texas Observer, Megan Kimble details how Kelly Hancock is leading the charge to let apartment owners jack up the late fees they can charge. 

Another wingers’ pet project, a campus free speech bill, has passed both houses. It ignores the reality that, in high-profile cases elsewhere, off-campus agitators, often themselves conservatives, caused the problems, and that speeches organized by campus-based political groups have high security costs said groups dump back on the university. It also ignores that wingers' support for free speech is just as selective as that of many of the librulz they condemn.

The Texas bullet train dodged a legal bullet about its ability to use eminent domain but it still retains a stupid route, as I have said before. Whether Brains is right that it’s too late for that to be addresses or not, along with other issues, remains to be seen. Kuff, like Brains, likes the bullet train. Whether it actually gets built and then, whether as a privately financed line, it asks for state help because of its stupid route and stupid stops, also remains to be seen. (After all, stupid routing ideas are part of what derailed California's bullet train, at least for now.) And, before the end of this year, I'll surely have more on this issue. Nuff ced for now. No ... not enough ... there's several people that agree with me on ever-growing comments on Kuff's link that Texas Central was, has been and is selling a pig in a poke. A lot of libertarian-type wingers at groups who know how to crunch numbers, like Reason, are also saying that ride counts are not just inflated but WILDLY inflated. (That said, contra the wingers, airports are subsidized in various ways, too.)

The "save Chick-fil-A" bill has risen from the dead.

For the second straight Lege, a "disobedient presidential electors" bill has failed.

SB 9, Hughes' vote suppression bill, is dead.

Rachel Pearson flaunts her sorcery in the face of Forever Fuckup's antivaxxerism.

HB 2504, which would make it much easier for third parties to have statewide ballot access, was very alive and well and has now passed all three Senate readings and heads to Abbott's desk. Progress Texas showed it is part of the duopoly by not even listing it under good bills in its late-session bill watch blog (NOT linking) which got a smackdown on Twitter from me:

@WesleyStory0 If HB 2504 to ease third party ballot access ain't on your list of "good bills" in the #txlege you and .@progresstx are watching (and I saw it ain't), then you're not really so progressive, are you? I "understand"; you're part of the #duopoly. But I don't "accept."

— reallyDonaldTrump  🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) May 20, 2019

And that's that for what's happening in Austin.

All things Dallas area

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, the “Tropical Trump,” showed up in Dallas and got protested. 

Stephen Young also calls out the abysmal editorial page of the dying Dallas Snooze for its blank-check support of Trump’s nutteries. 

Jim Schutze notes how all the people that allegedly “matter” in Dallas, the “endorserati,” are lining up behind Eric Johnson in the mayoral runoff, just like they did for the Trinity toll road. He also talks about the runoff debate between Johnson and Scott Griggs. 

Schutze also kicks former Observer peer Robert Wilonsky, now at the Snooze, in the nads, for buying the official city of Dallas party line for the umpteenth time. (Lawrence Wright, in his latest book, "God Save Texas," seems to actually like Wilonsky.)

Yours truly notes that activist investors in Belo / The Snooze rightfully are huffy when it overestimates the value of its own property by $5 million and takes a bath in its sale.

RIP to I.M. Pei, designer of the interesting-looking Dallas City Hall and the beautiful Morton Meyerson Symphony Center. Pei has five buildings overall in Dallas. Read about the Meyerson's history here. As a one-time DSO season ticket holder, the place is beautiful and still has fantastic acoustics.

Fort Worth is following Dallas' footsteps in a homeless crackdown.


Texana

Lisa Gray says people should avoid bad tacos. I'd expand that to avoiding bad Tex-Mex, which, as a person who grew up in New Mexico, includes most of it.

Speaking of overrated Texas food, Whataburger is looking for a minority investor to help facilitate an expansion. (Contra Texas Monthly, In-N-Out is better than What? A Burger?, as I spelled it on Twitter.) What would be a GREAT train wreck and probably applauded by many wingnut Texans? Chick-fil-A doing a takeover behind the scenes as that minority investor.

Beyond Bones wants to tell you about Megalosaurus.

National and more

Scoffing at, yes, SCOFFING AT Donut Twitter and #TheResistance, Socratic Gadfly, with help from political scientist and author Corey Robin, explains that Trump is not a fascist but rather a schematically predictable variety of president.

David Bruce Collins writes about sociopathy in various ranks of politics.

Juanita has thoughts about Gene Simmons and his kind-of presser for DoD.

Slate argues that Alabama and Missouri have gutted the plans of The Umpire and his Roberts Supreme Court to quietly kill Roe at the edges.

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High speed rail in Texas? #HSR before California?

Jeff Turretine says that the Pointy Abandoned Object State could zip past the Leaden State (California, y'all) on high speed rail. A Texas consortium is organized to back HSR to connect the Texas Triangle.

I've long said that Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio/Austin are perfectly situated for HSR. There's cities of big enough size to justify it, cities that are connected to each other for business reasons (or politics, with Austin), and just the right distance apart that HSR can easily compete with planes, especially with airport parking and boarding times, etc., on travel time.

The Texas group is also pitching this as a totally private issue, no "gummint" involved.

Flip side? Beyond the eminent domain Perry mentions (he'll have an update tonight or tomorrow) as part of his take, along with the conservative politics of the no "gummint," will be related issues. Among them, I'm sure, will be attempts to railroad through (I see what I did there) all the environmental parts of the permitting process. We've already seen that if it's oil vs. lizards, or water vs. cranes, we know who wins, damn the paperwork and damn the feds who are part of that "gummint."

Anyway, since the biggest push right now is coming from H-town, go back to Perry's website and look for updates. Or click this link; it's a fairly detailed update from him, linked to one from another Houston blogger.

Is high-speed rail closer to coming to Texas?

The Dallas Morning News says yes, with word that North Texas über-insider Tom Schieffer has become an adviser to the Texas Central High-Speed Railway, a proposed private bullet-train line between Dallas and Houston.

The Snooze notes this about the former ambassador to Japan:

The Japan part of Schieffer’s résumé is key: The Texas-based company is affiliated with the Central Japan Railway, a leader in rail technology and operator of the bullet train that serves Tokyo and Osaka.

Yep. Despite touting of China's recent (shoddy) bullet train construction, Japan is probably still ground zero on where to look for engineering, routing and other ideas.

This sounds smarter than waiting on driblets of federal funds for high-speed rail, given wingnut opposition to Obama's push, and other issues.

It also sounds smart to focus on Dallas-Houston, rather than looking at the whole Texas Triangle.

And, per company president Robert Eckles, a former Harris County judge, it sounds like the path of the train likely would NOT follow I-45.

“This train doesn’t perform well if you have to stop it many times," Eckels said. "It works great if you stop it midway, maybe up at College Station, maybe a couple of other places.”

Given that Aggieville is on Texas 6, which splits off I-35 at Waco, a Waco stop near Baylor makes sense. And none other.

You could run a couple of "express" routes with no intermediate stops and a couple of nonexpress routes with those two stops added. Those trains would have a stop every 90 or so miles. You don't want anything shorter than that.

Now, this is all years, years, away, but, there's smart thinking, it sounds like.

Amtrak does make a profit!

As long as you confine your focus to the Northeast Corridor.

And, this is a legitimate point of view, especially when it comes to high-speed rail.

Florida and Gov. Rick Scott, like the Texas Triangle here in Texas, actually are well-placed for high-speed rail. So is what's already being planned in California.

But most of the rest of the country isn't. Not without subsidies even bigger than we offer airlines today, by far.

The "flyover" territory has its name for a reason. With trains, even high-speed rail, it's an issue more serious yet. Even allowing for longer boarding and security times, on any route over 450 miles, a plane is clearly faster. It's a dead heat, on average, at 350-450 miles.

And, look at other countries with high-speed rail.

Besides clearly boondoggled China, most of their routes are ... under 450 miles as far as major city connections. The US Northeast is as densely populated as the denser parts of Western Europe. Most the midsection, even east of the 100th meridian, isn't close.

Why California's #HSR is dumb

NOTE: This article has been updated to reflect further information international HSR as well as that in California.

I love the idea of high-speed rail, and in the U.S., California is well positioned. Its two big metro areas are spaced far enough apart for HSR to make a lot of sense over conventional rail. Easy extenders can go to Sacramento and San Diego.

But, right now, there's a HUGE problem. Wayyyy too many stations in between the two metro areas. I love the idea of HSR, but, if you can never get a train up to top speed, your specific plan is el stupido, Golden Staters. Modesto, Merced AND Stockton? You can't get the train up above Greyhound speed. Ditto for the Palmdale stop. Going northbound, once HSR gets through Cajon Pass, let it roll all the away to Fresno.

And other locations? Gilroy for HSR? Tulare? You've got to be kidding. There's no population base at either site. I suspect that the routing AND the number of stops are all "political gravy." Well, tough shit. You drive, take a bus, or take a local train from Tulare to Fresno, or whatever, to ride HSR. Palmdale? Not on a direct line between SoCal and Fresno. After Santa Clarita, no stops until Fresno.

Now, not all these stations may be used for every train, tis true. But, the state government's HSR agency needs to be clearer about that, as well as about tentative ticket costs and other things. And trust me, I"ve looked both there and Wikipedia. That said, the state's map says Tulare is "regional," but doesn't explain more what that means. And Gilroy is NOT listed as "regional."

This applies to HSR in other locales. In Texas, a "triangle" of Dallas, Houston and Austin would work well. But, the Dallas-Houston train can't stop at College Station, nor the Dallas-Austin one at Waco. DC-NYC would work, but that train can't stop in Philly. Florida? First, no way to do a Miami-Tampa line without even more damage to the Everglades, is there?

High-speed rail, whether here, the U.S. or Europe, has some specific needs. Stations must be at least 150 miles apart; else, standard rail is just fine. Realistically, 200 miles or so is better. Stations shouldn't be more than 500 miles apart, or else you're less efficiently competing with air travel. And, terminal cities need to have a minimum population density, an issue The Economist addresses well. More on all of this below the fold.

NYT blindly loves Chinese high-speed rail

After a brief acknowledgement that some Chinese are talking about its shoddy construction, the old gray lady jumps into a lovefest for Chinese high-speed rail.

What it either overlooks or deliberately misstates?
1. Those soaring property costs area construction bubble very similar to the one the U.S. had just a few years ago; they have little to do with high speed rail, and they exist in places outside of high0-speed rail corridors,
2. Just how shoddy the rail construction is — shoddy enough that trains aren't allowed to run at close to max speeds. Those trains will NEVER get up to 350 km/hour without the entire track system being relaid.

Beyond that, the story is of little relevance for the U.S. until enough mindsets change to make high-speed rail economically viable. And that won't happen without carbon taxes.

Hold on, high speed rail

Both the NYT and Washington Post op-ed pages weigh in.

In the Times, Richard White, a Stanford history professor who identifies himself as a liberal, looks at the old transcontinental railroad as a caution against subsidies to high-speed trains today.

He then talks about assurances of how well high-speed rail will do in the Golden State:

Those assurances are based on rosy and widely ridiculed ridership projections. Critics, the most trenchant of whom are part of the Community Coalition on High-Speed Rail, say that only two high-speed rail routes run without operating subsidies: Paris to Lyon and Osaka to Tokyo.

He's not alone in noting that.

In the Post, columnist Charles Lane talks about "China's Train Wreck." Beyond the fact that high-speed rail in the Western world is iffy and dicey, in China, which President Obama has cited, it appears to be (shock!) the stuff of slipshod construction, graft, bribery and more.

The bad construction? So poor that Beijing has ordered top speeds to be cut 30 mph.

Now, if even more liberal types in California, where a Los Angeles-San Francisco line makes sense otherwise, are opposed to subsidizing it, then it may be a clunker indeed.

China wants to build high-speed rail — in US!

If anything illustrates the United States' collapse into a post-manufacturing nation, per Paul Kennedy's "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers" and previous post-Renaissance nation-states (and get a CLUE, David Brooks, "emotional experiences" do NOT "sell"), it's the idea that that China now wants to build high-speed rail in the United States.

Beyond our increasing collapse as a manufacturer, including both GM and GE making more money off credit than products (note that GE wants the Chinese company as a partner), this story illustrates so many other things:
1. The gutting of manufacturing companies for stock $$;
2. The refusal of the government to invest in infrastructure;
3. The Chinese using govt money to boost private companies like this;
4. The cluelessness of U.S. conservatives to all this, and the drag-along factor of neoliberals.

Obama high-speed rail plan – a bit timid?

First, only in the United States would “more than 150mph” be considered high speed. In Europe and Japan, you have to break 200mph to be talking high-speed rail.

Second, what is the cost of this pegged at? And, besides $8 billion in economic stimulus money, how much will you lay out and how soon?

Also, not connecting the Chicago and Northeast corridors (PDF) makes no sense. Nor does running a South Central corridor up to Little Rock, rather than keeping it Texas-only, if you’re not going to then run it up to St. Louis and connect it to the Chicago corridor. Ditto for running high-speed from New Orleans to Houston, then not connecting it to either Austin or San Antonio.

Also, why would you not connect the California and Pacific Northwest segments?

Stupidest of all, on that map, is not connecting the Eastern corridor to proposed high-speed rail inside Florida.

Let’s look at these in more detail, and in light of not planning 200mph, rather than 150mph, speeds on these trains.

Chicago-New York, for example, is 711 miles. At 200mph, that’s just over three hours. By plane, since you don’t get up to 550 mph that fast, it’s about 2:25, per Travelocity. To avoid airport hassles, etc., for an extra 30-40 minutes? No brainer.

By car miles, San Francisco-Seattle is about 100 miles more. So, bullet train vs. plane would probably be about 1:15 slower. Still a reasonable price to pay.